WASHINGTON – Representatives from the Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Ranking Member Sander Levin, asking for a hearing to discuss the future of the Highway Trust Fund and emphasizing the importance of investing in our roads, bridges and transit systems.

The Blue Dog Coalition made a definitive push for a return to centrist politics in our nation’s capital today, endorsing 3 candidates for the 2014 election cycle. Selecting Democratic candidates with years of experience in business and public service, the Blue Dog Coalition continued its model of success by selecting individuals willing to stand for the middle ground and support commonsense policies to put the country back on a path to fiscal soundness and economic prosperity.

The first round of Blue Dog endorsed candidates includes the following:

Since election night, many political pundits have written about the demise of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Caucus in Congress. What is most distressing to us is not the pontifications of the political punditry (many of whom picked Mitt Romney to win in a landslide) but, rather, the acceptance by many Democrats that the South is a lost cause.

What is so puzzling about Democrats writing off certain congressional districts, like those in our home states of Mississippi and Louisiana, is that they fail to either see or accept the correlation between winning those highly competitive House seats below the Mason-Dixon line and taking control of Congress. It is not a coincidence that the reduction of Blue Dogs on Capitol Hill coincides with Republican control of the House of Representatives.

I am a Blue Dog Democrat because I believe that a fiscally conservative government and being committed to the security and safety of the United States are two principles our founding fathers supported and should continue to be the core principles upon which our leaders govern.

Work hard, help others, use common sense, and don’t spend money you don’t have. Those are lessons my husband, Phil, and I learned growing up and they are the values we passed on to our children. They are also the values that make us proud Blue Dog Democrats.